Eurovision Song Contest 2025 in Basel, Switzerland

[AyeshaErotica 1,640]

57 minutes ago, StrawberryBlond said:

With the fact that you can now vote for your fave at any time, the running order no longer matters as much or risks people getting overshadowed.

 I don't see why this can't be provided with every contestant from here on out. If you don't want to look at them, just don't.  The catchiness of Sweden's got me but knowing the lyrics were just about saunas actually ruined it for me!

It's funny, our commentator said that the videos of each contestant involved them visiting an iconic place in Switzerland but a lot of them were very random as there aren't many iconic places so most of them were just out in forests!

Don't you think it is unfair when people can call from the start? I  feel it gives unfair advantage to early poistions and disadvantage to the ending positions. I think it was better years ago when voting was only allowed AFTER all songs were known. This is just NOT FAIR as Lilly Allen would say!

 

Well, in science it is said one needs to survey at least 150 people to get a representative representation of a general opinion. The jury has how many people - 5,6? So of course there will be a HUGE discrepancy.

5-6 people is highly individualistic and never representative.

Typically 25%-50% of a song doesn't make big sense, the second sentence is often chosen so desperately that it rhymes with the first sentence and is often odd, for example from Madonna's I love New York:

"I don't like cities, but I like New York
Other places make me feel like a dork
Los Angeles is for people who sleep
Paris and London, baby, you can keep"

It's obvious that the word "dork" was chosen only to rhyme with York, and if York didn't appear, no one would think of using "dork." And even the grammar is changed to make it rhyme by force.

And if you translate this from English to any other language, York and dork won't rhyme, sleep and keep neither, and it will sound strange and odd in the other language and one would question the sense. But it sounds less strange and makes most sense in English, in the original, because the words are chosen to rhyme, same as Baller makes sense in its original but less in its translation, than it feels like Madonnas song.

By relying on translation, it heavily devalues the song.

Also Italy only got 97 points from the public, less than Poland's foreign language song, less than Estonia which was also in Italian without subtitles and did better, less than Israel which was partially foreign language, less than Finnland in Finnish, and less than Swedish. So I don't think that one can say "subtitles paid off", as there is counter-evidence that it does not. The juries know the songs in advance, so they can translate if they want in advance.

You wrote

" I don't see why this can't be provided with every contestant from here on out. If you don't want to look at them, just don't.  The catchiness of Sweden's got me but knowing the lyrics were just about saunas actually ruined it for me! "

Well, you answered it for yourself - lyrics can ruin the feeling, so this is a good reason NOT to provide them.  You yourself ruined the Swedish song for you with the silly translation. I however, without any translation, I fully enjoyed the song. Some songs can sound better without knowing their lyrics. They should not be provided, because they distract, once they are displayed, they are too annoying to be ignored, I liked italy less because of it. I didn't read them, but they distracted me and made the performance worse.

I agree they did not show many iconic places and that Switzerland doesn't have many of them. Did I miss something, they didn't show the Rheinfall, did they?

Spoiler

Our commentator by the way lied to us. He said Finlands Song will be in German. But only the songtitle and catchphrase was.

 

Edited Sunday at 07:36 PM by AyeshaErotica

[StrawberryBlond 14,656]

3 hours ago, AyeshaErotica said:

Don't you think it is unfair when people can call from the start? I  feel it gives unfair advantage to early poistions and disadvantage to the ending positions. I think it was better years ago when voting was only allowed AFTER all songs were known. This is just NOT FAIR as Lilly Allen would say!

 

Well, in science it is said one needs to survey at least 150 people to get a representative representation of a general opinion. The jury has how many people - 5,6? So of course there will be a HUGE discrepancy.

5-6 people is highly individualistic and never representative.

Typically 25%-50% of a song doesn't make big sense, the second sentence is often chosen so desperately that it rhymes with the first sentence and is often odd, for example from Madonna's I love New York:

"I don't like cities, but I like New York
Other places make me feel like a dork
Los Angeles is for people who sleep
Paris and London, baby, you can keep"

It's obvious that the word "dork" was chosen only to rhyme with York, and if York didn't appear, no one would think of using "dork." And even the grammar is changed to make it rhyme by force.

And if you translate this from English to any other language, York and dork won't rhyme, sleep and keep neither, and it will sound strange and odd in the other language and one would question the sense. But it sounds less strange and makes most sense in English, in the original, because the words are chosen to rhyme, same as Baller makes sense in its original but less in its translation, than it feels like Madonnas song.

By relying on translation, it heavily devalues the song.

Also Italy only got 97 points from the public, less than Poland's foreign language song, less than Estonia which was also in Italian without subtitles and did better, less than Israel which was partially foreign language, less than Finnland in Finnish, and less than Swedish. So I don't think that one can say "subtitles paid off", as there is counter-evidence that it does not. The juries know the songs in advance, so they can translate if they want in advance.

You wrote

" I don't see why this can't be provided with every contestant from here on out. If you don't want to look at them, just don't.  The catchiness of Sweden's got me but knowing the lyrics were just about saunas actually ruined it for me! "

Well, you answered it for yourself - lyrics can ruin the feeling, so this is a good reason NOT to provide them.  You yourself ruined the Swedish song for you with the silly translation. I however, without any translation, I fully enjoyed the song. Some songs can sound better without knowing their lyrics. They should not be provided, because they distract, once they are displayed, they are too annoying to be ignored, I liked italy less because of it. I didn't read them, but they distracted me and made the performance worse.

I agree they did not show many iconic places and that Switzerland doesn't have many of them. Did I miss something, they didn't show the Rheinfall, did they?

  Reveal hidden contents

Our commentator by the way lied to us. He said Finlands Song will be in German. But only the songtitle and catchphrase was.

 

Well, of course the idea of it is unfair but it gives more credence to the idea that the most beloved songs will definitely get as many votes as possible and most fans will have heard all the songs previously so no song will be new to them. Most casual ESC viewers don't vote, it's seen as a fan-centred thing, so everyone who's into voting will already have their faves all ready to vote for and won't have their minds changed on the night.

Of course a lot of words won't rhyme when translated into other languages (most rhyming words in English definitely don't rhyme when translated into French and Spanish so I'm sure that's true across the board) which is why dubbed songs can have quite different lyrics, some of which may even be better than the original. But if all 26 countries sing in their native language, we can hardly become fluent in all of them, so subtitles do the work for us. I like to know what the song's about and what the singer's artistic intention is. It's very hard for me to appreciate the content of a song if I have no clue what the words mean. 

Most of the time, translations do help, this is one of the rare instances where it didn't. If I feel the presentation of the song was sending a message but the translation tells you otherwise, it's a bit of a bummer when that happens, but it's rare. What put me off Italy originally was their overly long and weird music video (one of the few countries that bothered with a proper music video and not just a live performance) but to see the song performed so simply and the lyrics laid out before me made me see the value in it so much more. But the actual instrumental did nothing for me, sounds like a really dated 60's/70's production that's very bland. Without the translation to shine light on a language I don't speak, I would've got nothing out of it lyrically or instrumentally. As someone who likes to sing, I'm just a big believer in actually listening to the lyrics to know what you're singing and supporting. The amount of people who just listen to the music but not the words always make me shake my head. If the lyrics to a song aren't good, I just check out. So I need to know what it's about to know if I'm invested or not.

Not any waterfalls, so far as I could see. Mostly outdoor activities or making food in kitchens. But I think most videos of the singers in the country look something like this. It's just a chance to put your country on the map and increase tourism.

[AyeshaErotica 1,640]

22 hours ago, StrawberryBlond said:

 And due to the rules about not sending massively successful acts, we can't send someone like Adele as that wouldn't be fair.

 

Are you really sure that such rules exist? I asked artifical intelligence and it said there is no ban on ultra-famous singers for participating in the ESC. If Adele wanted, she could take part in the UK selection process, but she does not do it because she already is very famous and she fears she could get a mediocre or bad place or have too high expectations and be unhappy with anything below top 5 because fame does not automatically gurarantuee a high position or does not want to take away the chance for someone else, so she does not want to take the risk and maybe it is better this way, so that new British artists get attention. I don't think she would win or be top 3 but certainly not last 3 either. But there is no ban. The UK is just not so desperate that it has to resort on global-famous acts.

 

You know, when Loreen won the first time,

during the first time she was full of joy and really happy,

and for the second time it wasn't the same anymore, she was like she knew she could win but actually did not want to win so that another new winner would be a first-time winner, her face was restrained like "Oh, I have taken the victory position for someone else. Was that fair? But well, if Europe wants me to win, I have to accept my victory. It is what it is"

Edited yesterday at 03:08 PM by AyeshaErotica

[Bellatrix 34,689]

22 minutes ago, AyeshaErotica said:

The UK is just not so desperate that it has to resort on global-famous acts.

They did send Bonnie Tyler though 

No shade, I'm not saying it was a desperate move. I love Bonnie and I loved UK for sending her. It was just a shame that the song didn't live up to the expectations imo.

[AyeshaErotica 1,640]

16 hours ago, StrawberryBlond said:

Well, of course the idea of it is unfair but it gives more credence to the idea that the most beloved songs will definitely get as many votes as possible and most fans will have heard all the songs previously so no song will be new to them. Most casual ESC viewers don't vote, it's seen as a fan-centred thing, so everyone who's into voting will already have their faves all ready to vote for and won't have their minds changed on the night.

 

While I agree that the % share of fans who vote and know the acts inadvance will be much higher than the % share of casual ESC viewers, I still do believe that casual ESC viewers votes who do not know the acts in advance massively outnumber fans, and that there is somehow an empiric advantage for early starting positions.

Why?

Actually I do not know any number but another GagaDaily user posted on the previous page some numbers that I quote:

So Spain cast 10x more votes in the final than in the first semi-final. Now I have no numbers for other countries and it isn't perfectly scientiifc approach but I will extrapolate form Spain to Europe in general. It may be true that other countries have less discrepancy between final and semi-final because Spain is automatically qualified.

Most ESC fans probaby have watched and voted the first semi-final, too, while most casual ESC viewers joined later for the final.

Now some ESC fans will have not watched the semi-finales either and joined later, like I did. Because I want all the songs to be new and not spoil them in advance, otherwise they will be no surprise and the final will not feel like Christmas if I knew the songs in advance. And honestly, this year the songs in average were less good than last year and if I had listened to them in advance, I would feel no joy and excitement for the final. So I think my decision is alright and wise. Also my country is always automatically qualified for the final.

I watch the semi-finals afterwards for the remaining acts. I recognize that I am here in the minority of the ESC fans and the vast majority knows them in advance.

anyway, since the number of cast votes is 10x higher in the final than in the semi-final but the majority of ESC fans is already watching the semi-finals, we have to assume that about 90% of all cast votes do NOT come from ESC fans but rather casual ESC viewers.

Maybe the number is 80% if we assume some fans will vote more in the final. But the acts are new and there is no deep fan connection between the singers and the people, so I don't think fans vote that much often. I voted 3x, 1x Spain, 2x Iceland.

So, in the end, the general casual ESC viewers decide the winner.

 

Edited yesterday at 03:58 PM by AyeshaErotica

[StrawberryBlond 14,656]

7 hours ago, AyeshaErotica said:

Are you really sure that such rules exist? I asked artifical intelligence and it said there is no ban on ultra-famous singers for participating in the ESC. If Adele wanted, she could take part in the UK selection process, but she does not do it because she already is very famous and she fears she could get a mediocre or bad place or have too high expectations and be unhappy with anything below top 5 because fame does not automatically gurarantuee a high position or does not want to take away the chance for someone else, so she does not want to take the risk and maybe it is better this way, so that new British artists get attention. I don't think she would win or be top 3 but certainly not last 3 either. But there is no ban. The UK is just not so desperate that it has to resort on global-famous acts.

You're right, I researched the same thing and found it isn't an official rule after all. I'm just sure I heard our commentator say it one year and just accepted it. But for the reasons you mentioned, it would be very difficult to find someone at the peak of their career who would want to take part (some might actually fear it would be a career ender!) and as we have probably the biggest amount of successful singers after America, there's no need for for us to do well at Eurovision, plus we've won it several times over the years. We already have a monopoly over the world, we don't need to be successful at Eurovision too. For tiny little countries, they take this a lot more seriously than we do as this is their chance to make it big and it's their best chance. 

While we could easily send a big current name or legend, it wouldn't be well received. At best, we'd be called desperate and at worst, we'd be called cheaters. And we're already the black sheep of Eurovision as it is, we don't need to add any more fuel. It's like our punishment for having such domination over the music industry: when it's ESC time, you'll be treated like nothing more than the village idiot. What's crazy is that the entire continent made this an unspoken agreement. 

6 hours ago, Bellatrix said:

They did send Bonnie Tyler though 

No shade, I'm not saying it was a desperate move. I love Bonnie and I loved UK for sending her. It was just a shame that the song didn't live up to the expectations imo.

It's different if they're in a much later stage in their career, though. If you haven't had a hit in decades, it's seen as a final bow kinda thing. But yeah, she deserved much better material than what she got. Though I don't think her voice is strong enough anymore. Engelbert Humperdinck...now, that was a doozy. 

[AyeshaErotica 1,640]

5 hours ago, StrawberryBlond said:

While we could easily send a big current name or legend, it wouldn't be well received.

 

Speaking of legends, I saw the first semi-final and Switzerland appropriated and portrayed Albert Einstein as a Swiss.

I wanted to clarify that Albert Einstein was German and first presented his theory of relativity to the world in Berlin. It's true that, in addition to German, Einstein also had Swiss and US citizenship, and also lived in Switzerland and the US. But he was born in Germany, lived there for the first 16 years before moving to Switzerland, and moved back to Germany after 19 years, where he published and developed his major work, The Theory of Relativity, at the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin before going to America in 1933. In terms of his lifetime, he lived half in Germany and split the other half between Switzerland and the US. What Switzerland did was culturally appropriation of a German thinker and possibly of one of the biggest legends of science of all time.

Edited 19 hours ago by AyeshaErotica

[River 113,769]

On 5/18/2025 at 5:32 PM, Juanlittlem said:

The thing Spain wants to see is how many votes every country got from us. It's weird that a country whose TV and main audience is against Israel ends up giving their 12 points to them. 

I do not know of ONE person that voted for Israel from Spain, but I do know of people voting for Sweden, Estonia, France, Finland, Austria... There's clearly something fishy about Israel's points.

I think it's time to just get the harsh truth.

The silent majority, the one who's not protesting for Israel, voted, this is the true face of Europe, of Spain, Belgium, Ireland. it's also an indication for the future of the left wing governments,  they will be out next elections.

Europe is turning more right wing, more nationalist and sees Israel as an ally, despite everything.

Also this the real face of the majority of the LGBTQ+ community, the majority is tired to see the Palestinian flag and the prides and to be associated with Palestine, many LGBTQ+ people admires Israel.

 

We're surrounding ourselves with people with the same opinions as ours most of the times, so it's easy to fall into the false reality that the everyone thinks the same, that just because 1k people out of millions are protesting against Israel, so everyone thinks the same.

 

And if we're coming back to the contest itself, we tend to forget that what we gays love, it's not what the GP likes, we sees it as Gaga fans as well. Sweden was loved by the gays for a simple reason, the sauna gimmick was sexy, but the song was not so good imo.

Serving got only 2 points, is another example, it's a very gay song, very gay culture, but the non gay GP didn't see it well, didn't understand it. so it failed, the 10% of the population voted for it and it's not enough to win a contest.

[Juanlittlem 44,965]

25 minutes ago, River said:

The silent majority, the one who's not protesting for Israel, voted, this is the true face of Europe, of Spain, Belgium, Ireland. it's also an indication for the future of the left wing governments,  they will be out next elections.

The thing is, while I agree that the right wing mightve voted for Israel (in fact Madrid's president criticised our message in favor of Human Rights and Im sure that led to right wing people to vote for Israel) it still smells fishy. How comes Israel gets 12 points from 13 countries but not a single point from those countries that need ID verification to vote? 

I do agree GP has more power in the finals and thats why the winner has always been someone who can please both juries and audience and not just a jury fave or televote fave.

[River 113,769]

24 minutes ago, Juanlittlem said:

The thing is, while I agree that the right wing mightve voted for Israel (in fact Madrid's president criticised our message in favor of Human Rights and Im sure that led to right wing people to vote for Israel) it still smells fishy. How comes Israel gets 12 points from 13 countries but not a single point from those countries that need ID verification to vote? 

I do agree GP has more power in the finals and thats why the winner has always been someone who can please both juries and audience and not just a jury fave or televote fave.

 

I think the whole thing will open a can of worms, most of the juries who gave 0 points to Israel, did that because it's Israel and not because of the song, if we start to dig into the whole process of the voting, televotes and juries, because Israel will surely complain about that and ask an investigation.. this truth will only gain Israel more support than before.

I mean, most of the juries had either a political influence or even fear by politicians/activists or personal opinion about Israel.

I believe the strategy next time should be just to ignore Israel because the moment you create a controversy and a anti campaign around a country like Israel, you only give them strength and support. same reason why Trump was elected, the whole anti-Trump campaign only made people vote for him. people are simply dumb and that we can't change, despite everything.

[AyeshaErotica 1,640]

6 hours ago, River said:

it's not what the GP likes, we sees it as Gaga fans as well. Sweden was loved by the gays for a simple reason, the sauna gimmick was sexy, but the song was not so good imo.

 

I thought the reverse was true. The song was good and Swedish is a highly beautiful language as we know since Paparazzi but the sauna gimmick was not well fulfilled. They could have graced Europe with their haîry âssés but they didn't  

Spoiler

This was more disappointing than Céline Dion not performing!

In our post-ECS discussion show, the moderator even remarked that they had too much clothes for a sauna theme and too much for average ESC standards. They could have had an outfit in-mid-song clothes change and make it more stunning but they decided to have all the time their old-fashioned East German Socialist Republic Michail Sergejewitsch Gorbatschow Soviet Style Clothes. This was so ESC 1965

Maybe well-hung Axel had the idea to improve the sauna gimmick but Kevin with his only 13cm refused, so it ended up like this.

But they got 4th place, which is very very good nevertheless.

 

 

Edited 8 hours ago by AyeshaErotica

[Bellatrix 34,689]

3 hours ago, River said:

I believe the strategy next time should be just to ignore Israel because the moment you create a controversy and a anti campaign around a country like Israel, you only give them strength and support. same reason why Trump was elected, the whole anti-Trump campaign only made people vote for him. people are simply dumb and that we can't change, despite everything.

I wouldn't say dumb in this scenario. It's not dumb if the pro-Palestinians are totally irrational. Like Sissal got dragged to the moon and back for giving Yuval a hug after the semi-final when the finalists celebrated together (all the other artists froze her out what I've heard).

Yuval is an innocent human being too, she has done nothing wrong and she is even a survivor from the terror attack, but people forget that/refuse to see it and things like that make me angry and can make me want to vote in protest too. 

Edited 6 hours ago by Bellatrix

[Juanlittlem 44,965]

30 minutes ago, Bellatrix said:

I wouldn't say dumb in this scenario. It's not dumb if the pro-Palestinians are totally irrational. Like Sissal got dragged to the moon and back for giving Yuval a hug after the semi-final when the finalists celebrated together (all the other artists froze her out what I've heard).

Yuval is an innocent human being too, she has done nothing wrong and she is even a survivor from the terror attack, but people forget that/refuse to see it and things like that make me angry and can make me want to vote in protest too. 

Mmm, its an interesting take but at the same time she's not speaking up about the Gaza situation so that makes her look bad.

Trying to keep it short here (I hope it makes sense), while I do feel bad for civilians in both Israel and Palestine there's clearly a different between the proportions. While Hamas is just a group attacking Israel we have Israel's military attacking and eliminating Palestine civilians with the excuse of targetting Hamas. I get Israel would never send a singer that admits that Israel is in the wrong by attacking Palestine, but even without that, when you look at the lyrics of the song and see what it tries to portray it just leaves it clear to me that I want nothing to do with that.

[Bellatrix 34,689]

2 hours ago, Juanlittlem said:

Mmm, its an interesting take but at the same time she's not speaking up about the Gaza situation so that makes her look bad.

Yeah that is true. I don't know the reason for that, none of us do and that's what I'm saying. We shouldn't be so quick to judge her and the other artists should be able to socialize with her without having to worry about getting dragged by the mob. 
There are good Israeli people out there who live under threat just for the sake of being Israeli and that irrational behavior is only escalating it.

And this is my last post about this, because I don't want to risk escalating it to an off topic discussion.